Geographers (and other social scientists) working in local and regional development ultimately seek to understand how—and to what extent—local and regional policy can positively affect economic growth and progress. This area of research and study throws up difficult and challenging questions, such as: what are the sources of regional development? And how do we account for the uneven development of regions, an apparent feature of geographical development in general, and one which seems to be reinforced by globalization?

This new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for a comprehensive reference work to allow users to make better sense of the voluminous scholarly and practical literature on these and other issues. Indeed, the sheer scale of the research output—and the breadth of the field—makes this title especially welcome.

Local and Regional Development has been assembled by the same editorial team behind Routledge’s award-winning Handbook of Local and Regional Development (2010) (978-0-415-54831-1). The collection is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the material in its intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars, advanced students, and policy-makers as a vital one-stop research resource.

Andy Pike; Andres Rodriguez; John Tomaney